Dirty paws and furry coat
by A Nameless Traveler
Summary: Derek Hale is content with his new lot in life. Sure, it feels like he's living on the fringes of his own Pack. And yes, this thing that he's had with Stiles on and off since he went to university has somehow twisted into something that terrifies him. And maybe, maybe sometimes his life feels unbearably lonely. Or, Derek adopts a pack of puppies and finds self worth along the way.


**Title:** Dirty paws and furry coat  
 **Author:** ANTchan  
 **Fandom:** Teen Wolf  
 **Rating/Genre:** Romance/T  
 **Pairings:** Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski  
 **Summary:** Derek Hale is content with his new lot in life. Sure, it feels like he's living on the fringes of his own Pack, the one left behind as they all go off to college while the younger, newer Packmates want nothing to do with him. And yes, this _thing_ that he's had with Stiles on and off since he went to university has somehow twisted into something that terrifies him. And maybe, maybe sometimes his life feels unbearably lonely. But no one's trying to kill or torture him on a weekly basis, so there's no room for complaints.

That is, until Derek finds a box of abandoned puppies and his life is forced to change for the better.

* * *

 **Dirty paws and furry coat**

 _For Char._

* * *

-1-

Not for the first time, Derek wonders how he gets into these things. Just when his life has settled into comfortable stillness, something comes along and turns his world upside down. Even when no one's turning up to kill or torture him on a weekly basis anymore, _somehow this always happens._

His routine had been unbroken for weeks. He'd get up early, take a run through the Preserve, stop at the cafe on the way back to his loft, and go about his day. Right now, Derek _should_ be showering and then settling in to check his email and newsfeeds and conferring with his current clients.

Instead, he's at Deaton's, watching the man examining a whining puppy with gentle hands.

He'd heard the pitiful little thing whimpering in an alley on his way home, a high-pitched sound that was both painful to the ears and the heart. It was easy enough to find the pup, a shivering ball of white, brown, and black fur behind some boxes piled near the alley wall.

The box sitting next to it, full of three more, alarmingly sluggish pups-

That he didn't expect to find.

His coffee was left forgotten in the alley, as he scooped up the box and the crying puppy and sprinted the remaining distance to his car.

The pups that are worse off are currently curled against each other under a warming lamp. Deaton had given each of them a shot of fluids during their examinations. Their heartbeats sound a little stronger already, which is comforting. The final pup, the biggest and healthiest of them, is still crying as Deaton turns her over and presses a stethoscope to her chest.

"Well, her lungs are certainly very strong," Deaton chuckles. "They're Australian Shepherds, about three, almost four weeks old. Which is fortunate. Any younger and being away from their mother would make things dangerous. This one's a little malnourished, but her heartbeat is steady. She should recover quickly under proper care."

"And the others?" Derek has to keep himself from shifting from foot to foot.

Deaton seems to notice anyway, and smiles enigmatically. "They will need to stay here under observation for a few days, at the very least. And be checked regularly over the next few months. But, barring anything sudden, I see them recovering well enough."

"Good. Great." He tries not to show how _relieved_ he is. "How much do I owe you?"

"Ah, yes. Let me get this little one some formula and you can take her home for the night. You only need pay for her treatment now, the other three you can pay for when they're ready to go home-"

"What. No." His voice jumps a few notes higher against his will. "No, I'm not taking it home."

The druid barely pauses to look at him. He steps away from the counter to go rustle through a supply case. The puppy, now free of his grip, tries to toddle towards the edge of the exam table. Derek has to swoop in and rescue her before she takes a four foot drop. "Oh? That's too bad. Of course, I could find someone to foster them eventually. But I figured, you work from home, the town is peaceful, most of your Pack are away at university. You have the space, the funds, the stamina to keep up with them. And your senses would make it easy to monitor their health. And," Deaton stops to set the container of puppy formula on the table. He's grinning outright now, nodding at the puppy curled in Derek's hands, "you seem to like them."

Damn him.

The puppy takes that moment to start nibbling on his thumb. She gets comfy in his hands, hooking her paws between his fingers and staring up at him with big, soulful eyes. She's got the prettiest brown eyes Derek has ever seen. Not the striking blue that the breed can have, but in the light of the exam room they look almost amber. They almost remind him…

Shit.

Her tail wags against his ribs. He sighs.

"What do I need?"

On the other side of the table, Deaton chuckles. "I'll make you a list."

-2-

Derek arrives home that evening, exhausted after being cooed and fawned over by the pet store clerks, with nearly three hundred dollars in supplies and a worn out puppy in her brand new carrier. He plans on letting her sit in it while he puts everything away, but as soon as he sets the carrier down she starts _screaming like she's dying_ until he opens the door. Derek watches her toddle out on clumsy paws, ears perked to explore her new surroundings, heart warmed by the sight.

And then she promptly squats down and pisses all over his floor.

He sighs heavily, and goes to grab a paper towel to clean up. Only to find that in the _thirty seconds_ it takes him to walk to his kitchen and back, the puppy has somehow miraculously gotten over her shaky legs and has disappeared entirely.

It takes him five minutes of tearing the loft apart to find her crammed under the couch, gnawing on a cord. "Damn dog," he mutters under his breath. He's not swayed by her huge, sparkling eyes when she turns to him. Not at all.

None of his work gets done that day. Instead he spends it chasing after the five pounds of fur that has now invaded his life, reading up on how to foster abandoned puppies, and bottle-feeding her. By the time she's fallen asleep on him, Derek is starting to think this might be a strange, but rewarding turn in his life. If only temporarily.

And… then night hits, and the puppy _won't stop crying._

Derek tries everything, from feeding her to fluffing up her blankets in the welping box, to carrying her around until she falls asleep. Every time he walks away she starts to whine. She's lonely, he realizes at around two in the morning.

"Join the club," he tells her before even thinks about what he's saying. Just admitting it makes something hollow and cold turn over in his chest.

He falls asleep on the couch with the dog tucked up under his chin.

-3-

He picks up the rest of the litter at the end of the week, after Deaton's sure they'll make full recoveries. They're actually alert this time, which he's relieved to see. They're bright-eyed and squirmy and the eldest of the four struggles in his arms to get to the others. After setting her in the makeshift welping box Deaton has made for them, she immediately tumbles over to the smallest pup of the litter, and stretches her body across her sibling.

"How has she been handling her new home?" Deaton asks him after handing over the bill. Derek doesn't even blink over paying it, though he probably should.

"She's recovered without any problems. But she has trouble getting through the night." Derek shrugs, and after a beat, admits: "I think she's lonely."

"Ah. Well, that is normal. Being separated from their own is painful at any age."

Oh, hell.

"Yeah," Derek grunts.

"But, I imagine the companionship will help her feel less lonely."

They're not talking about the dogs anymore. This is why Derek _hates_ talking with the druid. Rather than answer, he loads the puppies up into his Toyota two by two. They're too big to fit in one carrier, so he lines his trunk with the emergency blanket and hopes for the best. He hears them fumbling around the entire way back, even without the growling and yipping. And he doesn't give a fuck how many horns get honked at him for taking slow turns.

After he gets them to the loft, though, after that…

Derek swiftly kisses his comfortable routine goodbye.

He gives up on trying to fully integrate his routine pre-puppies and his routine post-puppies after a few days. Everything he reads tells him that the pups need routine - waking up, feedings, playtime, and bedtime should all be kept consistent. It sets a good foundation for training. And Derek does that. It's chaos before he sets alarms on his phone, but he manages. He learns to keep rags and a mop handy for easy cleanup, he learns to anticipate - not how they'll get into trouble - but how they'll break all of his expectations of what he thought was puppy-safe.

But what Derek didn't expect - could _never_ have expected - was how much of his life they would consume. _Everything_ in his life is now these dogs, whether he wants them to be or not. It takes him a week to figure out how to get out of his own loft to go for a run without them waking up and trying to leap out of their cordoned off sleeping area in the spare room. Trying to work out becomes less exercise and more an exercise in puppy-dodging, as they try to climb all over him. Even doing chin-ups results in puppies jumping at the hem of his pants and hanging on by their tiny, sharp teeth. Warm-up and cool-down yoga becomes futile when his "meditative calm" is interrupted by paws and snouts in his face. He becomes accustomed to the smell of puppy breath.

Even getting translations done as he used to is now impossible. Working in his little study up the spiral staircase is now just a stress test for his senses. It's impossible to focus when all he can do is agonize over every little sound from downstairs, or even worse, the highly suspicious silence.

He buys a small worktable and sets it up downstairs instead. He can make calls in what he mentally dubs the "quiet office" if he needs privacy. For the time being, his life revolves around his new foster dogs. Derek should be annoyed by that.

And yet.

He names them, even though he knows he shouldn't. He's going to _foster_ them, not keep them. They shouldn't have names. He shouldn't get attached. _And yet._

The biggest and probably the oldest of them he names Hilda. She's the only one to have the "classic" black and white coat with brown markings on her cheeks and above her eyes. She makes herself out to be the alpha of their little pack, and is never afraid to use her huge paws to push her siblings around. Though she seems to be protective of the runt of the litter, and the only boy.

That one Derek calls Nanna. He's practically half of Hilda's size, quiet, and unbearably sweet. He's the type to be content with being picked up and manhandled. Derek once spent an entire evening with Nanna cradled inside a zip-up hoodie, and the puppy didn't even struggle. He's the easiest of the three blue merle pups to pick out, because his entire snout is a deep copper brown.

The girls Clio and Minnie are practically twins in coloring, except that Clio has a brown and black spot over one eye. And while Hilda's barks and howls were the ones that originally drew Derek to them in that alley, Clio is the _loudest_ of them does _not_ stop chattering and yipping and growling, not even in her sleep. Derek has watched her sit in front of Hilda and yowl for an hour straight because her sister has the toy that she wants.

Minnie, lastly, is the one Derek has to watch out for. She's less assuming than her bolder and much louder sisters and it is _a lie_. Because the instant he turns his back on her is when she reveals what an evil little thief she is. Living with her is like going to war, where the battlefield is anything he's using that she decides she wants. Pens, papers, his socks, anything that she can get her grimy little maw on is carried off the second he turns his head.

His life becomes filled with fluffy, yipping chaos and Derek… kind of likes it.

He's not alone anymore.

Having the pups around makes him admit just how lonely his life has been since the Pack has gone off to college. (Since _Stiles_ has gone off to college, even if Derek doesn't have the right to make that distinction.) It's not that they've forgotten him, or that he's not Pack anymore. But they're just… busy. College is full of stress and distractions, and Derek doesn't worry that they rarely ever talk to him while away at school. Or that some of them don't talk to him at all. The entire Pack always gets together between semesters and on holidays anyway, and Derek has his fill of social Pack interaction then. It's enough.

And it doesn't even bother him that the younger Pack members - Liam, Hayden, and Mason - don't interact with him much at all, even if they're still in Beacon Hills for their senior year. Derek had been distant when Liam was bitten, and gone for their integration into the Pack. They don't know him. So Derek doesn't expect them to be knocking on his door at every moment of the day.

Which is how the puppies end up becoming a secret - completely by accident. It's not something Derek does consciously. But with his utter lack of social life and the fact that, other than to go for a run or pick up groceries or puppy supplies, Derek doesn't even leave his loft, it just happens that way. Cora is the only one he tells, and not even properly. One day he just sends her a video of Nanna snoring belly up on the rug, to which she responds with " _DID YOU GET A PUPPY?!"_ He spends an hour explaining it to her and sending her picture after picture of his new "four-legged foster children."

The others, Derek doesn't know what to say to them. And as weeks pass by, any idea he has to tell the Pack just seems odd. So he doesn't. Derek falls into a stagnant bubble of sorts, where the passage of time is only measured in how quickly the puppies grow. He's content with that, basks in the peace.

But of course, reality eventually comes back to reassert itself.

The pups are about six weeks old the next time Stiles Skype calls him. At the first chime, Derek jumps to answer it, _not_ out of excitement, no, it's just that it's past midnight and if _anything_ wakes the puppies up, Derek is going to throw something. No, it's not like he's desperate to see those sparkling, mischievous eyes, or the adorable slant of his nose, or his absolutely _sinful_ mouth. It's not that it's been nearly a month and a half since they've even spoken, and Derek is caught between missing Stiles Stilinski and worrying that the man - not a boy any longer, no - has found someone else to fuck.

Stiles' face blinks into view, and Derek's breath hitches in his throat. He hates it, how his body involuntarily reacts to this lanky idiot now. Especially like _this_ , when it looks like he hasn't showered in days. His hair's grown even longer, long enough to be swept back now, and he hasn't shaved. His facial hair is doing that strange patchy thing that it always does. His skin is paler, his eyes a little glazed and his clothes rumpled. He looks unkempt and a little gross and _fuck_ if it doesn't make Derek want to drag him to the nearest flat surface just looking at him.

(And also drag him into the nearest bed and tuck him in and make him sleep. Possibly next to Derek, which is a newer, far more terrifying reaction.)

"What's that _thing_ on your face?" he snarks, to cover up the swell of affection.

" _Hey. Not all of us could grow a perfect beard at sixteen."_

"No, but _that_ is more dead animal than beard. I think I see bits of food in it. When's the last time you _showered_?" He smirks, and watches Stiles flush red and paw at his face. Only to catch his joke with a scowl.

" _Dude, not funny. I just got off midterms. The better question is 'when's the last time I_ _ **slept**_ _?' The answer is like 36 hours, by the way. I crashed two nights ago studying for my Statistics midterm."_ He rubs at his eyes, his mouth pinching in a suppressed yawn. It does horrible, awful things to Derek. Like make him want to take care of him. _Disturbing._

"Are you done with your midterms, then?" he asks.

Stiles nods. _"Yeah, I'm done. So I can sleep through the weekend and no one can fuckin' stop me."_

"So why aren't you?"

" _I tried. But my brain is still going and not shutting up and it's kinda driving me nuts. So I thought hey, you know, what's Derek doing? How's his spectacularly boring life going? And maybe he'd like a, y'know, a nightcap just as much as I would…"_

Ah. Yeah, Derek's been expecting that one. It's the same thing as it always is with them now.

Derek is under no illusions about their relationship. It was born from sexual tension and banter, stretched thin until the week before Stiles left for college. What was supposed to be a single - _fantastic_ \- fuck while they were brave enough to take the chance became a series of casual hook ups whenever Stiles came back to Beacon Hills. And sometimes cam sex or sexting if one (or both of them) were too horny to wait for the next break. Sex is the extent of it. Just mindblowing, fun, intense sex. There's no strings attached. Stiles has fucked other people while at school. And Derek's fine with that. He's happy with all of it.

Or at least, he thought he was.

Now Derek finds himself fretting over the idea of Stiles being with someone else. He finds his mind lingering on those mornings after Stiles stays over, when he doesn't rush off quickly and stays to have breakfast, the two of them wandering around the loft in various states of undress. His feelings for Stiles are heading somewhere towards romantic and it, frankly, is scaring the shit out of him. He's growing tired of _just sex_. But it's all he's going to get, and he knows it.

And he's ready to do just that. He's ready to answer the flirtatious gleam in Stiles' eyes.

And then he hears the tiniest little yip from the spare room.

"Not tonight," he says quickly. "I've got to go."

" _Uh. What-"_

"I have to finish some work and then sleep. I'll talk to you later. Good night, Stiles."

" _But dude-_ "

"Good _night,_ Stiles." He ends the call before Stiles can actually start up an argument. The loft descends into relative silence. There's still some rustling in spare room as the puppies shift around, but the danger of them waking up has passed.

His heart is still pounding, which is stupid. He could've just told Stiles about the dogs. But telling him, any of them, feels like admitting how lonely he is without the Pack around and how _desperate_ he is for any kind of companionship. And the sick sort of relief that comes with avoiding his feelings for Stiles? That has nothing to do with it.

Not at all.

-4-

Except that it does.

Because after that, Derek keeps finding excuses to not have sex with Stiles - not through text or through dirty pictures or through Skype. It's easy for him to find reasons not to, with the puppies taking up most of his time now. Finding excuses that he can actually tell Stiles, that's harder. There's only so many times he can use his translation work as an excuse before Stiles catches on. In fact, it works only three times before Stiles starts in on him daily, in that obsessively focused way of his that drives Derek _insane_ and makes him snap and tell Stiles to just leave him alone.

He should feel bad about it. He does feel bad about it. He doesn't have to see Stiles to know that he's confused, hurt, and frustrated. It's going to start a fight once his semester's over. But maybe by then the distance will help Derek get _over_ this. And then once they've fought and Derek has apologized, they could be friends again. Yes. Derek will apologize later. Probably.

But where Derek is failing spectacularly with Stiles, the rest of his social life is beginning to pick up. Finally admitting that he's _lonely_ has pushed him to fix it.

He starts small. Laughably small to normal, well-adjusted people, he's sure. He texts the Pack to ask how they are. Scott is, unsurprisingly, the first to respond. Kira follows minutes later, and they both ask him about Beacon Hills and tell him about their classes with an enthusiasm that's a little infectious. Kira asks him for advice with one of her papers, which makes his heart warm to be needed. Lydia doesn't answer him until the next morning, and Malia a few days later. It's… nice, actually, to talk about something other than the next big life-threatening scenario. He's not great at small talk, but then again, neither is Malia, who instead just starts sending him snaps of her day rather than explain anything. And Lydia rants at him for an hour about her latest dissertation, which he understands only a third of, but she doesn't seem to mind that.

It feels good. It feels like he's connecting with them, like he's actually a part of a Pack again. It gives him the courage to try for bigger things. One night he asks Scott what Melissa's takeout order is, and goes to give her dinner. The sunny smile it puts on Melissa's face is worth the awkward explanation for showing up out of the blue with food. Convincing himself to take dinner to Sheriff Stilinski takes… a bit longer to do. Parrish, at least, covers most of the social ground as Stilinski frowns in confusion at him. Derek may or may not slink away from that one, feeling out of place but warm from the sincere thank you the Sheriff gives him.

He can do this, he finds himself thinking. He can get to know his own Pack outside of the threat of death. He can have something like a _normal life_ again.

Plans for his next steps are something akin to fantasies. Going to a bar with Parrish, maybe? Watching a baseball game with Stilinski? Could he actually work up the nerve to take Liam, Mason, and Hayden to lunch after school?

The possibilities are terrifying and thrilling.

' _You're almost a real boy, Derek Hale,'_ he thinks cruelly.

Meanwhile, the puppies are growing like weeds. They hit eight weeks, and then ten. They're weaned off of formula and onto puppy chow and start gaining pounds faster than Derek can keep up with. Deaton gives them their second round of vaccines and his approval on their recovery after being abandoned.

But all the books and articles Derek has read say that now is the time when pups are learning "essential dog behaviors" from their parents. They need socialization with other dogs. Deaton offers to set Derek up with the local shelter, but Derek, well…

He's worried about them. They've never been around other dogs before. They've never been around any _people_ other than Deaton and himself. They need to be eased into it.

Which is how Derek ends up in his wolfskin, flattened onto his belly in front of four cowering puppies.

Not exactly his finest plan.

His ears droop low, and he whines gently. When they sniff the air but don't move, he wags his tail in quiet thumps, hoping to convey that he's not a threat. He only has his instincts to go on, and even they aren't exactly accurate. He's a werewolf, not an actual wolf. And wolves aren't domestic dogs.

Yeah, this was an awful plan.

Derek waits for several minutes like that, trying to appear as calm and as friendly as he can. He can't help the way his ears twitch when they start to edge around him in a wide circle. Hilda is, unsurprisingly, the first to come close. She comes at him from the side, batting her paw against the floor the closer she gets, testing just how far she can push before he turns around and snaps at her. He doesn't, and only huffs when she hits his leg with her paw.

That seems to be the proof they needed, because after that everything descends into fluffy, barking chaos. It's not the first time in the past few months that Derek's found himself covered in puppies, and it certainly won't be the last. The pups spend the next hour following him around the loft, weaving in and out from under him and between his legs, jumping up to nip at his muzzle, his tail, his ears if they can manage.

He lets his animal instincts take over, lets himself run from one end of the loft to the other with the pups chasing after him as fast as their too-large paws can carry them.

The squeaky toys are a little odd. Loud and rubbery. But no one's here to judge him for indulging. Minnie comes barrelling into him as soon as he releases the squeaky duck, snatching it and dashing away to enjoy her prize. Clio's at her heels, yowling and yapping the whole way.

He's managed to get Nanna into a game of tug with the rope toy when it happens.

The door to the loft slides open so fast that it screeches. " _Derek-_ "

Derek lets the rope fall from his mouth, a second too late. He has time to register Stiles standing in the doorway - eyes red and face pale, hair ruffled as if he's been running his hands through it - and the puppies losing their collective shit over a newcomer to the loft, before he slinks quickly around the room divider.

" _Stiles!_ " he exclaims as soon as he comes out of the shit, his voice half-garbled in a growl. "What are you-"

"What the hell?" Stiles' voice cracks, almost drowned out by the din of four excited dogs. " _What the hell-_ Did you- oh my god, hi. Hi, hi puppies, hello." Derek takes the chance to throw his clothes back on, and when he rounds the divider he finds Stiles standing at the bottom of the entry stairs with Minnie in his arms. She's doing her best to lick the stubble right off his face, pawing at his chest and squirming in his arms. "Oh my god, you got _puppies_. _You were playing with puppies in your full shift._ "

"Um."

"No, seriously, this- _when did you get puppies, Derek?_ "

Derek's face burns. "Two months ago. I'm just…" He raises his voice over Stiles' indignant squawk. "I'm just fostering them." It's a weak lie even to his own ears. He's not finding another home for them, he decided that _weeks_ ago.

"You're totally keeping them." Stiles palms the phone out of his pocket after putting Minnie down, and he's-

"No. What are you doing?"

"Sending pics to the Pack." The little shit has the nerve to grin at him.

"Stiles, don't-"

"Seriously, dude, did you think you could keep this a secret from us? You got _puppies!_ "

His phone is starting to vibrate across the coffee table, as the Pack gets whatever pictures Stiles is sending them. He doesn't want to look. "Stiles," he growls in warning.

"I'm glad it's puppies! I am. Because I kinda thought you were avoiding me because you didn't want me anymore, which, haha, made these last few weeks suck. A lot. But you were doing this weird Derek Hale thing where you didn't know how to tell me you got a fucking dog- oh." The smile slides right off his face as Derek can't hide his flinch. The tension falls between them, like the room was just submerged in ice water. "Oh," Stiles says again, and his tone does this awful, hollow resonance. "You don't…" The young man looks around, at Derek, at Clio still trying her hardest to get his attention, at the floor. "Right. Right, okay. What the fuck."

"Stiles…" he tries again.

"No, I get it, I think. I mean, I really don't. But you don't- but _what the fuck_ , Derek, what did I do?"

The words fail him. They always do. _Damnit!_ Stiles is working himself up into a frenzy right in front of him, hurt and angry, his eyes shining in a way that makes it hard for Derek to breathe. Stiles is either going to get up in his space or he's going to walk out that door and refuse to speak to him. So Derek does the only thing he can. He closes the distance before Stiles can get past the point of no return, and drag him in for a kiss.

Stiles grasps his arm hard enough to hurt, not melting against him but pressing in anyway. His kiss is all teeth, sharp nips at his mouth and rough sighs that just as angry as they are wanting. "Do you want me or not?" he hisses against him.

"I do," Derek says. "I _do_ want you. I…" Fuck, he _hates_ this. He leans away enough to tip his head back, trying to find the words. "I shouldn't."

"The hell does that mean?"

He grasps Stiles by the shoulders. "I can't do this anymore. I can't have sex with you anymore. It's my fault. I started avoiding you because of the dog thing, which was stupid. But then I started thinking that maybe if I just stopped for a while this would go away. It'd be better than waiting for you to give something you don't want to give." A hand on his chest stops him. Stiles looks less pissed and more confused now.

"Wait. Wait. You gotta back up for me, big guy. Explain that a little better." When he shrugs helplessly, Stiles groans. "Come on, Derek, use your words. You want me. But you don't want to have sex with me."

"I _do_ want to have sex with you!" Derek huffs irritably. "But I want more than that. I want you to tell people you're with me when they flirt with you at those stupid frat parties. I want you to stick around after you spend the night. I want to go places with you. I don't want to be be on the fringes of this Pack anymore, just there when I'm needed or I'm convenient. I want to be a part of your lives, of _your life_." Once he runs out of words, Derek finds that he has to catch his breath. His heart pounds, and his stomach feels like it's twisting into knots inside him.

But Stiles isn't pushing him away. He's gaping at him, beautiful mouth falling open, trembling around the words he can't quite seem to form. Derek has found his words in the same instant Stiles has lost his.

The irony isn't lost on him.

Nanna whines at them from the floor.

"You want to date me," Stiles says quietly.

"I just _said that._ "

"No, dude, you said a lot of… of really romantic stuff. But you never actually said the words."

" _Yes,_ Stiles. I want to date you."

"G-Good. I want to date you too."

Derek's mouth clicks shut. "Oh. Good."

"Yeah."

He's not sure who leans in for the next kiss first. All that matters is that Stiles ends up against him, in his arms, pressing hot, ecstatic kisses to his mouth. His hands clench a little too hard around Stiles' hips, but he doesn't seem to mind, only whining against his lips. "Don't do that again," Stiles murmurs between kisses. "Don't… shut me out." He sighs, lips dragging down to his jaw. "You gotta talk to me. We have to _talk_ instead of freaking out."

"I will," Derek promises, and means it, even if he knows it's not going to happen just yet. For either of them. They don't _do_ talking, not about feelings. Not even Stiles, for all his words, can do that without difficulty. He kisses him instead, trying to pour everything he can't say into it.

Trying to move them towards the couch only ends in a yipe as Hilda gets underfoot. They break the kiss with a gasp. Hilda goes skittering across the floor, affronted. "I can't believe you thought you could get dogs and not tell us," Stiles teases, his voice gone breathy.

"That was an accident," Derek admits. "I didn't think I had anyone to tell for weeks. And by then it felt weird."

Stiles' expression twists curiously, and he takes Derek's hand. It's the simplest touch, and yet it's like a shock straight to his heart. All he can do is follow mutely as Stiles leads him to the sofa. "Tell me about them?" he asks.

Derek frowns at him, not sure what to do with this. Eventually, he reaches down to scoop Nanna up into his lap. The pup goes sprawling across his legs without a care in the world. "Alright. On one condition."

"Yeah?"

"Will you go with me to take them to the park after? They've never been to the park yet."

Stiles bites his lip. "Okay. It's a date."

 _A date._ Oh shit. Derek has to clear his throat. "Well, this is Nanna, and the one you were holding was Minnie…"

-5-

"Derek, wait," Stiles asks suddenly. " What's Minnie short for?"

"...Minerva."

"And Clio is…?"

He's been caught. He's totally been caught. "Cliodhna."

"Derek Hale, did you name your dogs after… a Valkyrie, a Banshee Queen, a war goddess, and a Sumerian moon god?"

"Maybe," he concedes.

Stiles scoffs, throws his hands in the air, and, to Derek's utter confusion, reaches out to cup his face in his hands. "You," he says severely. "You are the most precious nerd."

"Shut up, Stiles."

* * *

 **End. Walk on, Traveler of Worlds.**


End file.
